Robert Downey Jr. got a pardon but he still has a record

Actor Robert Downey Jr., right, sentenced for drug use in 1999, was pardoned on Christmas Eve.

Actor Robert Downey Jr., right, sentenced for drug use in 1999, was...

The pardon that Gov. Jerry Brown bestowed on Robert Downey Jr. on Christmas Eve doesn’t expunge his record; the only practical effects are that Downey can serve on a jury and legally possess a firearm. Convicted felons are allowed to vote in California so the “Iron Man” star didn’t even get his right to civic participation returned because he already had it.

Exemption from jury duty and being banned from buying a gun are probably the only upsides to my 13 felony convictions. If the only things I would stand to gain from a pardon are the chance to appear at the courthouse every year and the ability to own a weapon, then the chances I would apply for one are zero.

Downey’s case makes a pardon’s value unclear but what’s downright confusing is the public benefit of criminal records.

Along with me and Downey, 68 million people in the United States have criminal records. Our felony records pose such insurmountable obstacles in reintegrating ourselves into society that I can see no other purpose for criminal record keeping than to justify everyone else excluding me from employment, housing, licensing and anything else from which unwanted people can be eliminated.

I traversed a justice system, not a criminal conviction system. Justice is not served only through black marks against a person’s name. Downey’s conviction was entered only after he failed a drug court diversion program that was supposed to wipe his record clean.

Because he relapsed, however, Downey’s diversion was rerouted to prison and a life of stigma — even with a governor’s pardon. Downey has a felony conviction because he was an addict and he did what addicts do: He continued to use drugs. It isn’t so much that he became a law-abiding Californian, as Gov. Brown said; it is he’s become sober. The clear-headed Robert Downey Jr. was always a good citizen.

Other good citizens of California know this, as demonstrated by their vote for Proposition 47, which redefined some nonviolent felony offenses as misdemeanors. They understood that people with medical conditions shouldn’t be sent to prison to get better, and they shouldn’t carry the shame of a felony conviction acquired when their medical condition caused them to violate the law.

Criminal records accomplish little for public safety. Outside of preventing certain people from legally possessing firearms — preventing felons from owning guns is the most meaningful gun-control policy we have — a criminal record cannot stop or deter ex-offenders from committing another crime. If anything, the prejudice and economic ostracism that accompanies the conviction are what push people into more crime.

Would we fall into total lawlessness if there were no criminal records and Proposition 47 applied to all offenses? It happens in Europe, where criminal convictions are not part of the public record.

Our system of public criminal records — while sometimes beneficial when it bars dangerous people from situations that can enable wrongdoing, such as sex-offenders working with children — gives power to the person who can somehow diminish the dishonor through acceptance, either through something as minor as a job or as significant as a pardon.

Restricting people convicted of felonies is the only type of intolerance for which there is no liability, civil or otherwise. Because this prejudice is so pervasive, I feel so beholden to anyone who gives me a second chance that I can never be his or her equal.

And that’s really why we insist on a public felony record system; maintaining a criminal conviction database that is accessible to everyone is how we sustain inequality in a country that is supposed to foster social mobility.

The fact that Robert Downey Jr. needed formal redemption for his drug crimes shows us what our problem is: We’re addicted to convictions, to creating criminal records that provide little public benefit (other than protecting people with power).